As you cast this spell, you hurl a single slashing weapon at your foes, magically striking at all enemies along a line to the extent of the spell's range. You make a normal melee attack, just as if you attacked with the weapon in melee, against each foe in the weapon's path, but you can choose to substitute your Intelligence or Charisma modifier (as appropriate for your spellcasting class) for your Strength modifier on the weapon's attack rolls and damage rolls. Even if your base attack bonus would normally give you multiple attack rolls, a whirling blade gets only one attack (at your best attack bonus) against each target. The weapon deals damage just as if you had swung it in melee, including any bonuses you might have from ability scores or feats.

No matter how many targets your weapon hits or misses, it instantly and unerringly returns to your hand after attempting the last of its attacks.

+

Quote from: Iaijutsu Focus

If you attack a flat-footed opponent immediately after drawing a melee weapon, you can deal extra damage, based on the result of an Iaijutsu Focus check.

That bumps Whirling Blade up from "might clear a few mooks" to "Skillmonkey is FIRIN HIS LAZOR"

(Actually, now that I look at it, there's nothing actually saying you have to attack in melee, or with the weapon you drew. So you could just draw a dagger and then shoot someone with a crossbow, or throw the dagger - with Quick Draw you could actually full-attack by drawing and throwing a bunch of daggers. Flat-footed is still a major limiter, though.)

Requires a slashing weapon, so crossbow bolts are out unless they do that. I seem to recall a netcutter variant or something along those lines.

Anyway, getting stuff flat-footed en masse can be quite the pain it seems.

Going before them in initiative (first round only)Paralyzing the enemy (much better things to do vs a paralyzed enemy)Making it balance if the enemy has less than 5 ranks of Balance (use a Sculpted Grease I suppose?)

And that's mostly it against any decent number of enemies. There are plenty of ways to make a single target FF but they simply wouldn't work against multiple targets in a 60 foot line. So I guess it requires setup, but there's one oddity I found:

Rules Compendium pg 92 adds in this part to the Hide skill that applies in other circumstances:

"If you’re successfully hidden with respect to anothercreature, that creature is flat-footed with respect to you. Thatcreature treats you as if you were invisible (see page 76)."

But Invisible says nothing about flat-footed, just denied dex to AC. So this might be a case of the RC being "errata" again.

One big oddity of Whirling Blade is it says "Effect: 60-ft. line." Not Area. It's apparently the only spell like this that's instantaneous but the fact that it doesn't have an area means it can't be Sculpted for example. But being able to Sculpt it would open up some more interesting options.

And to continue the dick analogy... There is such a thing as penile cancer and sometimes it does require surgery to remove. And there can be an associated phantom "limb" sort of thing after that, but better that than the cancer.

Keep in mind armor and weapon proficiencies do have feats, but when counted as part of a class's features they are no longer feats. The monk for example is proficient in several exotic weapons, but it's never counted as having the feats for those weapons. Same for armors, even though a Fighter is proficient with heavy armor it still isn't counted as actually having the feat.

Went to format my new SSD and accidentally formatted my main hard drive instead. The main things I want to get back are all my bookmarks (easily over 1,000 by now...) and also Factorio saves and I see there are ways of getting data back if it hasn't been overwritten but it costs a wee bit of money even for a regular DIY program. Bleh

But I did get the SSD split up into a couple drives so one has my OS and the other has whatever stuff I want to be speedy. Made one hell of a difference in Path of Exile load times, that's for sure.

EPIC DUELISTFrom Sword and FistThe epic duelist darts and weaves in combat, relyingon his extraordinary agility and cunning to winthe day.Combat-related feats should occupy most of yourbonus slots. Look to Epic Weapon Focus, Epic Prowess,and Superior Initiative to gain the upper hand. Ofcourse, no duelist is complete without widespreadrecognition, and Epic Reputation does the trick well.The epic duelist’s most important ability score is Dexterity.Intelligence bumps help increase your cannydefense. Strength isn’t as significant for most duelists,since they tend to favor finesse weapons. A duelist whorelies on interaction skills should consider increasingCharisma from time to time.

Other Options: Epic duelists favoring two-weaponcombat should look to Perfect Two-Weapon Fightingand Two-Weapon Rend for a boost. To really show offagainst lesser mortals, pick up Exceptional Deflectionor Infinite Deflection and watch the enemy archersgasp in awe.

Maybe it's Avenger ACF which gains the Monk's AC/Speed & Ranger's FE/Track (generally seen as terrible given how great WS is) might be useful, idk. I kind of feel like they hit the nail on the head with Mystic Ranger. It really doesn't lose out on either end of the fighter~wizard spectrum but it won't go full "Tier 1" Druid on the group either.

Either way, pick up Planar Touchstone[catalogues of enlightenment] or dip Contemplative for the Plant Domain's Rebuke Plants.

If you haven't already finalized things, I think it's worth mentioning the druid ACFs again. They're generally regarded as not as strong as the standard druid, but if you don't want WS anyway, then they can offer interesting alternatives. Here is a link to the avenger.There's also the Swift Hunter.

Not to be confused with the feat Swift Hunter which allows combining some stuff of Ranger and Scout together.

First, they all have as a prerequisite the ability to turn or rebuke undead. Thus, they are open to clerics, paladins of 3rd level or higher, and a member of any prestige class or any creature that has that ability.Second, the force that powers a divine feat is the ability to channel positive or negative energy to turn or rebuke undead.

In other words, only the ability to turn or rebuke undead can be used to power divine feats. Nothing else, unless there's a ruling somewhere else specifically modifying that or the feat itself says otherwise. See https://dndtools.net/feats/categories/divine/?page_size=100 for a list of divine feats.

Mystic Ranger is available in Dragon Mag 336 page 105. It trades slower acquisition of Endurance, combat style feats, and Favored Enemy and an entire lack of the animal companion to gain 0 to 5th level spells, with the progression of 0 at 1st level, 1st level spells at 2nd level, then another level of spells each even level until 10th when it gets 5th level spells.

The 1st combat style feat is gained at 3rd level, then Endurance at 4th, then Improved Combat Style at 7th, and Combat Style Mastery at 12th.

Usually it's combined with the Shape-changing ACF from Unearthed Arcana page 58 (or the SRD) where you trade away your combat style feats to get Fast Movement like Barbarian as well as Wild Shape like Druid but only into small or medium creatures.

See also http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=1543 for more details on combining it with the feat Sword of the Arcane Order in Champions of Valor and the Shooting Star substitution levels also in Champions of Valor. Note that since Mystic Ranger trades away its animal companion it cannot get the 4th level Shooting Star sub level because that requires trading your animal companion as well.

Having the ability to use wizard spells is useful though it can be tedious to get going depending on what downtime you have to get hold of and decipher a spellbook, etc.

Felt the need to share this since I'm... Unsure and hesitant on what to think, though that's partially due to the late hour. Tencent has been good about letting strong-performing companies keep their monetization models such as LoL has, but it's still Tencent and anything to do with them I take with a massive grain of salt.